30 October 2011 Tis a Gift to Be Humble Matthew 23:1-12
My favorite modern version of the Cinderella story is told in the movie “Ever After” with Drew Barrymore. Even with its contemporary flair, Cinderella is still a principled young woman who, through no fault of her own, comes face to face with the harsh reality of a forced humility of sorts.
Finding herself living with a new step-mother and step-sisters Cinderella’s life goes from one of privilege to one of servitude. She becomes, for all practical purposes, a slave to her step-mother and step-sisters. Despite this, she humbles herself to her new status in a way I’m not sure many would. Her decision to live in obedience and humility is in response to her love for her father and her desire to honor him in her submission to her wicked step-mother.
She endures humiliation and physical suffering as she is repeatedly treated cruelly.
When it seems things cannot get any worse, they do. There is to be a royal ball where the young and handsome prince of the kingdom will choose his new bride. Her step-mother refuses to let her go and her step-sisters are particularly mean to Cinderella as they prepare to go to the ball with the hope of marrying the prince. They repeatedly taunt her about being unworthy.
But, this is a fairy tale! The story takes a magical turn when Cinderella not only goes to the ball, she is the one who marries the prince and is brought up from her humble station to become a princess. This is a love story that ends the way love stories are supposed to end, happily ever after.
Our gospel story this morning has the potential to have the same happy ending.
We hear Jesus warning us, if we do not change directions with our life we may wind up where we are headed. Never one to only tell part of a story, Jesus tells us the whole truth, opening for us the possibilities for a clear path to a better place.
Jesus lifts up several commandments or pronouncements along this new way.
First, we are to do what the scribes and Pharisees teach us. We are not, however, to do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. How often have we heard our parents, our teachers, our bosses say to us, do as I say not as I do. Perhaps we have said it too.
Is it obvious we humans can be so certain and clear about how we are to act, what we are to do to get along, what is good and what is bad, yet we have the most difficult time living our own message. I wonder why that is? Selfishness on our part, looking out for #1, taking happiness into our own hands, deciding for ourselves where our real pleasures lie, getting ours before someone else takes it all. It is pretty obvious where our allegiance lies when our actions do not match our words.
Secondly, in all things we are not to take on the character of these scribes and Pharisees. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on the shoulders of others, yet are unwilling to lift a finger to move them themselves. They do all their deeds to be seen by others as if they are on a stage of respectability and play the part, acting it out in front of others, as if this in some way legitimizes their importance. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues.
If we are in doubt about their perceived importance we need only look for them at the power table in the local restaurant. For there they are holding court in the public arena. Their seat is always front row, center stage, on the 50 yard line. They love to be greeted with respect and have people call them by their title. They identify themselves with their social, political, or financial prowess and expect that we seek out their broad ranging opinion even in areas where they have no particular expertise. Simply by their reputation they expect to be recognized as an expert in all things great and small.
Thirdly, Jesus tells us the other things we are not to do. We are not to be called rabbi or teacher or father. We are not to be known by our title. We are to be known by what we do, not who we think we are. We are to call no one our father on earth in place of our Father in heaven. We are to make no gods from the stuff of status which takes the place of our God in heaven. Nor are we to be called teacher in place of our teacher, Jesus Christ. Rabbi, teacher and father are roles reserved for God and God’s anointed. To presume such titles becomes a matter of pride. Perhaps even idolatry and sin.
Fourth, and most powerfully, the greatest among us is to become our servant. Have we heard the echoes we are the greatest? Thinking and acting so we become the one who does not do what Jesus teaches to be right and true. Yet, despite our tendency to selfishness, we are the one who is to become servant. Servant to ourselves and to others. But, most importantly, servant to God.
How does that happen? Through grand titles, specialized training, unlimited resources. No, today’s scripture tells us, it happens when we humble ourselves. When we find ourselves in what seems to us an unjust world and like Cinderella we show our love for our eternal Father by honoring him in our obedience, not to ourselves, but to our Messiah, our Savior, our Lord. Then we will be exalted for all eternity.
Exalted not because of anything we have done but because of what God has done for us. God’s gift for us creates his appreciation for the humility lived by those of us who genuinely seek to serve God’s world and not our own. Can this be true? Does Jesus really expect our exaltation with God will come only through our humility? Yes, he does, and if we have any doubt we need look no further than scripture for our assurance.
In another list of clear commandments or pronouncements, the Beatitudes, Jesus declares, “Blessed are the meek,” and the “poor in spirit” and the “pure in heart.” It is they who shall “See God”, and be called “the children of God.” This is a contrary notion to be sure and begs the question. What good is servant hood to society and exactly how can it bring about our exaltation? We are looking for power and rank and status and a high public recognition of greatness aren’t we?
Well, perhaps once again we are asking the wrong questions. Perhaps we see ourselves as scribes and Pharisees and what God expects from us is something radically different. Perhaps it is time to stop listening to ourselves and our own ideas about worthiness and listen to what our true teacher has to say.
Servant hood is what Jesus teaches. If we would be great (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to be great) we must be a servant first. If we choose to exalt ourselves, to raise ourselves to great power, we will find ourselves brought to our knees. Yet, if we humble ourselves, becoming a servant to the Lord, we will be known as an heir to the kingdom of God.
Now, if this seems counter intuitive or unnatural you may be right. Humility is unnatural. As Mark Twain recognized, the moment a person seems to have achieved real humility, it is destroyed by the pride at having accomplished it. Truly, humility is not a natural thing. What scripture tells us repeatedly is it is a gift of God’s grace.
Humility is not in the order of creation, but it comes to us in the order of the new creation, it is our baptism gift. And, perhaps the greatest news of all, it is a renewable gift, for things lost in sin are regained in God’s ceaseless outpouring of love. A love for each of us despite what appears far too often, our faltering lack of humility.
But how might we realize when humility is Jesus’ desired response? There is much in our life that gives us a place at the head of the table. That realization may begin when we first understand to be selfless is in itself a dying to self, an act of faith. Often, as scripture teaches, humility takes the form of serving the naked, the hungry, the thirsty, and the imprisoned. Loving our neighbor and especially our enemy.
These active themes of what we are to do for servant humility should become clear this morning. When humility is genuine, it has a clear active quality to it. No one should say about us Christian’s, do as they say not as they do. For true humility requires that our actions do match our words. “The greatest among you will be your servant”, Jesus declares. The servant is a worker. It is for this active, effective servant humility that we should pray.
And could a servant come to be among the greatest?
Frederic Buechner thinks it is possible. He tells the story of the biblical slave, Onesimus, whom St. Paul once met in jail. Buechner tells how Paul writes a letter to Philemon as a request that the master take the runaway slave back and that he treat him as a brother in Christ.
He concludes, “It’s not known whether or not Philemon took the hint and let Onesimus return to be the old saint’s comfort for what time was left him, but there’s at least one good reason for believing that such was the case. Years later, when Paul was long since dead, another saint was in jail by the name of Ignatius. The Bishop of Ephesus had sent some friends to visit him, and Ignatius wrote asking if a couple of them could be allowed to stay. Ignatius in his letter used some of the same language that Paul had used in his to Philemon, almost as if he was trying to remind the Bishop of something. And what was the name of the Bishop he wrote to? It was Onesimus.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship tells us:
“Our activity must be visible, but never be done for the sake of making it visible. ‘Let your light so shine before [others]’ . . . and yet: Take care that you hide it! That which is visible must also be hidden. The awareness on which Jesus insists is intended to prevent us from reflecting on our extraordinary position. We have to take heed that we do not take heed of our own righteousness. Otherwise the “extraordinary” which we achieve will not be that which comes from following Christ, but that which springs from our own will and desire.”
Cinderella had it right. Active humility for the sake of honoring only our Father leads us to life in the kingdom of God. And Jesus has it right too. When humility is genuine, it has an active quality to it. An active quality that mirrors as best as humanly possible what God expects we are to become, a humble servant. Our servant life is to be lived out of our love for God. Not for the purpose of any reward at all. Only that we might have the pleasure of doing something solely for God.
The glass slipper that awaits us is being held by our prince, our prince of peace, and when the shoe fits, we will amazingly live happily ever after.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever, Amen
103005.uvd
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
26 October 11 Following Jesus Matthew 22:34-46
Clearly we are in the midst of a great debate. Actually, we are surrounded by an army of debaters greater than we have experienced in recent times. Have you noticed the raging questions, the experts who ask us time and time again, who is the greatest, testing us and our abilities to remain civil in the grip of the frenzy. The political debates have been lengthy, the arguments intense. Who will we elect? Who will we choose to be our next President?
The election is far off yet the army of pundits have surrounded us with their questions intent upon theirs being the one question that will sway our vote. You may be like me, a bit fed up with it all, the negative campaigning, the at times ridiculous nature of the attacks. Though I must confess I have enjoyed the Saturday Night Live appearances in the past of some of the candidates. And their parodies, well, they are just too funny.
Clearly these are serious times, we are still at war, the economy is in dire straights, greater numbers of folk continue to lose their jobs, their homes and their retirement dreams. These issues do require our fullest attention and our most faithful response to the questions that matter. Who should we align ourselves with and for what reasons? What do we say in response to the serious questions that test our worry? Will we ultimately be judged by our response? You bet we will. When the dust finally settles we will wonder, what did we do, oh my, what did we do?
Now, before my sweet wife becomes even more nervous about what I might say next about world affairs and the Presidential election, let me assure you, I have no desire to suggest how anyone might solve our problems or vote. I am clearly the least qualified about such things and have nothing more to offer than many of us here this morning, an opinion, and we all know what that is worth. But I can suggest we turn to scripture, and to one who was tested repeatedly during his adult life.
In Matthew’s gospel we hear Jesus being asked to resolve a great debate. He was surrounded by the powerful army of Jewish leadership, experts filled with raging questions, testing his ability to remain civil in the midst of their grasp of sedition. The army of pundits is upon him with their questions and they are important questions. Which commandment is greatest, implying of course, is the law greater than even the hope of a messiah? And we do want to know, what did Jesus do? What did he say? How did he vote?
Jesus doesn’t hesitate, in vs. 37 – 40 he answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
What an amazing and unpredictable answer, the whole duty of human kind, the whole moral and spiritual law, is summed up by Jesus in one word: love. Love directed first to God and then toward one another.
Did we notice the unusual context from which love is to be directed? From our heart, from our soul, and from our mind. Amazing. Love is to be the pervasive action in our heart, our soul, and our mind. Each of us is to become a vessel for love in the world in the ways God teaches us through the life of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit that lives in each of us. We are to become life’s love centered here in our hearts, filling our soul and mind with love. And we cannot turn this love away from this time and place. We cannot ignore love any more today than we can on election day. Especially on election day.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the next time we sat in front of the evening news and just shook our heads as the candidates go at one another we could hear Jesus’ words instead? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
I’ve heard few folk, be they politicians or not, make such a promise, let alone actually model their life after loving one another.
This week saw the death of another tyrant in the world. We live in a dangerous and unpredictable time and there is a time and place for firmness. Our challenges are real and they should scare us for they are deeply important. It is truly the case that in a civilized society our response to life and life’s challenges, as well as life’s hopes, just might help save the world. And those responses do speak clearly to who we are and what we believe. As Christian’s we carry a higher responsibility because we are loved and called to return that love.
How then do we love when love seems the last thing we need to do? Is love the real change the world is calling for? If so, how do we possibly understand what it means to love with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind?
Try as we might few of us feel we ever get it right. We could always do more. We could always think less of ourselves and more for those around us. Sometimes there is a sense that we are on the right track, we are loving one another, and then Jesus pushes us farther along his way than we want to go. Love our neighbor as ourselves. I wonder, do we get to choose which neighbor?
I don’t find that in scripture. Love my neighbor even if he or she is a liberal Democrat, or a conservative Republican, a Jew or a Muslim, doesn’t’ look like me, even someone with no faith at all. I don’t know.
I read recently that one of the skills of being a faithful Christian is the cultivation of the awareness that we do not, on our own, know what love is or who our neighbors are. These words await definition. Therefore, we must get up, get dressed, and come down to church together to learn just what these seemingly obvious words mean when used by Jesus, Son of David, Son of God. Christian love, we find, does not come naturally, is not universally shared, is not a common sense sort of thing.
How then could God expect us to know God’s intentions where love is concerned? Can we simply think about God and from our thoughts know God and love. I think not. I cannot believe that my own thoughts could answer such a question. The truth is, we really cannot know God. But there is something we can do, what we can do is love God. We can love God as God loved us.
We need only look at the life of Jesus Christ to know how God loved us. It is through the life of Jesus Christ that we can love God, one another, and even our neighbor. Jesus revealed in the scriptures a call aimed directly at you and at me. Come and follow me is what he said.
Jesus lived the life we are to live, a live of love. He loved God and lived the life God intended him to live here on earth. He loved the people in his life despite their sin, even when they were rascals, or strangers, or foreigners, or in power, or out of power, even those well and those sick, large and small, young and old, even those alive and those who had died. All of them he brought back to life. Even those who nailed him to the cross.
Dearest Lord, how can we imagine such love! Jesus died so that we might live. Jesus brought us with him to the cross so we would be cleansed of our sins and Jesus brings us with him through his resurrection so we too might be ascending into heaven with him.
By this love God may be touched and embraced and known and by this love we are called to touch our neighbor in love with all our heart, soul and mind. This is to be how our life is lived. It is a life of love particularly defined by Jesus. By ourselves we don’t know what love is, not until Jesus tells us and shows us do we know.
Now, many of us have head the teaching of Jesus for more than just a few years. We have sat through lots of sermons, often awake, and read lots of scripture, and we would readily admit there is very little that is simple about Jesus and his love.
His call to our life is a call to die to self and be born anew. Not so simple. His call to our life is a call to sell all that we have and be his disciple. Not so simple. His call to our life is a demanding call.
But often we forget, everything we have belongs to God. Everything we are comes from God. Everything we enjoy is God’s blessing. All the love in our life comes from God’s amazing grace given to us.
Truly, Jesus shows us the way to God’s love and that way takes us, with Jesus, through the cross. That is where God defines ultimate love for us. That is where God shows us how to love. That is where we understand God. There on the cross.
When that day for voting finally comes and someone asks us who we are voting for dare we answer it’s not so much a candidate we desire as it is a faithful way of life. That we are voting for the most radial change the world has ever seen, our desire is for love, to try to do the loving thing for all people in all circumstances and in all places.
In the context of our lives as Christians could there be a response that would be more risky than this, “I’m for love.” Could there be a response more demanding, more difficult, more complicated and more like our Lord, our Savior, our Messiah, Jesus Christ?
Try it, “I’m for love.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
102311.gpc
The election is far off yet the army of pundits have surrounded us with their questions intent upon theirs being the one question that will sway our vote. You may be like me, a bit fed up with it all, the negative campaigning, the at times ridiculous nature of the attacks. Though I must confess I have enjoyed the Saturday Night Live appearances in the past of some of the candidates. And their parodies, well, they are just too funny.
Clearly these are serious times, we are still at war, the economy is in dire straights, greater numbers of folk continue to lose their jobs, their homes and their retirement dreams. These issues do require our fullest attention and our most faithful response to the questions that matter. Who should we align ourselves with and for what reasons? What do we say in response to the serious questions that test our worry? Will we ultimately be judged by our response? You bet we will. When the dust finally settles we will wonder, what did we do, oh my, what did we do?
Now, before my sweet wife becomes even more nervous about what I might say next about world affairs and the Presidential election, let me assure you, I have no desire to suggest how anyone might solve our problems or vote. I am clearly the least qualified about such things and have nothing more to offer than many of us here this morning, an opinion, and we all know what that is worth. But I can suggest we turn to scripture, and to one who was tested repeatedly during his adult life.
In Matthew’s gospel we hear Jesus being asked to resolve a great debate. He was surrounded by the powerful army of Jewish leadership, experts filled with raging questions, testing his ability to remain civil in the midst of their grasp of sedition. The army of pundits is upon him with their questions and they are important questions. Which commandment is greatest, implying of course, is the law greater than even the hope of a messiah? And we do want to know, what did Jesus do? What did he say? How did he vote?
Jesus doesn’t hesitate, in vs. 37 – 40 he answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
What an amazing and unpredictable answer, the whole duty of human kind, the whole moral and spiritual law, is summed up by Jesus in one word: love. Love directed first to God and then toward one another.
Did we notice the unusual context from which love is to be directed? From our heart, from our soul, and from our mind. Amazing. Love is to be the pervasive action in our heart, our soul, and our mind. Each of us is to become a vessel for love in the world in the ways God teaches us through the life of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit that lives in each of us. We are to become life’s love centered here in our hearts, filling our soul and mind with love. And we cannot turn this love away from this time and place. We cannot ignore love any more today than we can on election day. Especially on election day.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the next time we sat in front of the evening news and just shook our heads as the candidates go at one another we could hear Jesus’ words instead? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
I’ve heard few folk, be they politicians or not, make such a promise, let alone actually model their life after loving one another.
This week saw the death of another tyrant in the world. We live in a dangerous and unpredictable time and there is a time and place for firmness. Our challenges are real and they should scare us for they are deeply important. It is truly the case that in a civilized society our response to life and life’s challenges, as well as life’s hopes, just might help save the world. And those responses do speak clearly to who we are and what we believe. As Christian’s we carry a higher responsibility because we are loved and called to return that love.
How then do we love when love seems the last thing we need to do? Is love the real change the world is calling for? If so, how do we possibly understand what it means to love with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind?
Try as we might few of us feel we ever get it right. We could always do more. We could always think less of ourselves and more for those around us. Sometimes there is a sense that we are on the right track, we are loving one another, and then Jesus pushes us farther along his way than we want to go. Love our neighbor as ourselves. I wonder, do we get to choose which neighbor?
I don’t find that in scripture. Love my neighbor even if he or she is a liberal Democrat, or a conservative Republican, a Jew or a Muslim, doesn’t’ look like me, even someone with no faith at all. I don’t know.
I read recently that one of the skills of being a faithful Christian is the cultivation of the awareness that we do not, on our own, know what love is or who our neighbors are. These words await definition. Therefore, we must get up, get dressed, and come down to church together to learn just what these seemingly obvious words mean when used by Jesus, Son of David, Son of God. Christian love, we find, does not come naturally, is not universally shared, is not a common sense sort of thing.
How then could God expect us to know God’s intentions where love is concerned? Can we simply think about God and from our thoughts know God and love. I think not. I cannot believe that my own thoughts could answer such a question. The truth is, we really cannot know God. But there is something we can do, what we can do is love God. We can love God as God loved us.
We need only look at the life of Jesus Christ to know how God loved us. It is through the life of Jesus Christ that we can love God, one another, and even our neighbor. Jesus revealed in the scriptures a call aimed directly at you and at me. Come and follow me is what he said.
Jesus lived the life we are to live, a live of love. He loved God and lived the life God intended him to live here on earth. He loved the people in his life despite their sin, even when they were rascals, or strangers, or foreigners, or in power, or out of power, even those well and those sick, large and small, young and old, even those alive and those who had died. All of them he brought back to life. Even those who nailed him to the cross.
Dearest Lord, how can we imagine such love! Jesus died so that we might live. Jesus brought us with him to the cross so we would be cleansed of our sins and Jesus brings us with him through his resurrection so we too might be ascending into heaven with him.
By this love God may be touched and embraced and known and by this love we are called to touch our neighbor in love with all our heart, soul and mind. This is to be how our life is lived. It is a life of love particularly defined by Jesus. By ourselves we don’t know what love is, not until Jesus tells us and shows us do we know.
Now, many of us have head the teaching of Jesus for more than just a few years. We have sat through lots of sermons, often awake, and read lots of scripture, and we would readily admit there is very little that is simple about Jesus and his love.
His call to our life is a call to die to self and be born anew. Not so simple. His call to our life is a call to sell all that we have and be his disciple. Not so simple. His call to our life is a demanding call.
But often we forget, everything we have belongs to God. Everything we are comes from God. Everything we enjoy is God’s blessing. All the love in our life comes from God’s amazing grace given to us.
Truly, Jesus shows us the way to God’s love and that way takes us, with Jesus, through the cross. That is where God defines ultimate love for us. That is where God shows us how to love. That is where we understand God. There on the cross.
When that day for voting finally comes and someone asks us who we are voting for dare we answer it’s not so much a candidate we desire as it is a faithful way of life. That we are voting for the most radial change the world has ever seen, our desire is for love, to try to do the loving thing for all people in all circumstances and in all places.
In the context of our lives as Christians could there be a response that would be more risky than this, “I’m for love.” Could there be a response more demanding, more difficult, more complicated and more like our Lord, our Savior, our Messiah, Jesus Christ?
Try it, “I’m for love.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
102311.gpc
Sunday, October 16, 2011
“Which Life”
16 October 2011 “Which Life” Matthew 22:15-22
It has been a tough past few weeks and months in the world. Disasters natural and man-made alike have filled our newspaper front pages and television and radio airwaves with acts of terror, shootings at work, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, draughts, and wildfires. People have lost their homes, their jobs, their communities and in some cases, their lives.
Ten years ago it was 9/11. Following 9/11, there was war. War still rages on. These past few weeks and months people have been killing one another with bombs and guns. There is great fear in the hearts of many this very moment.
Closer to home, when the hurricanes and the earthquakes and the fires stopped their carnage people turned first to one another for help and then to their governments. Largely the cry to the government was filled with judgment and criticism. In comparison, when we see what our fellow citizens have done, it is not hard to be overcome by their sincere generosity and, in many cases, self sacrifice as they have reached out and offered the only help they could, themselves.
When we hear about the human cost in those places of man made violence, we can only turn to the government for help. The armies are the first to respond during times of war or when insurgents strike innocent people or criminals take matters into their own hands.
In perhaps less obvious ways, we find we respond in similar ways in our day-to-day living. Be it our business at work, our business or interest in the community or our business when at leisure, we turn to the power systems in place for guidance, for help, or influence. How else do we get things done? How else do we know what to do to function safely in this world? There are simply a myriad of systems and processes in place that we must know about and know how to navigate in order to get things done.
If we doubt this, we need look no further than the recent wildfires to see how quickly many lives came to a dangerous stand still when these systems were slow to respond. Those first hours and days in some cases there were no safe shelters, there was no food, no water, people did not have access to medical care, to basic sanitation systems, and when night came all were left vulnerable to the forces that surrounded them.
These truths are real and very, very, frightening. Our sense of absolute vulnerability should be evident. We live on the edge of chaos and don’t realize it until our comfort is shaken by events like these past few weeks and months. Our safety is shaken and all too often we find our sadness is too close to home.
Quickly we recover though, we remember, at our birth we needed help at every level and we received it. But as adults we come to believe we actually have real power and security. It seems that once we have reached a certain age and status we think we can take care of ourselves. If this is our belief, Jesus warns us to be permanently uneasy.
Jesus, we find, was on to something life changing in this morning’s gospel story. After the Pharisees plotted once again to entrap him they asking him, ‘is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not’, Jesus’ answer surprised them, ‘show me the coin used for the tax.’ Being the master at these games of entrapment, Jesus asks, “Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered. “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.’
Oh how wise and clear. Jesus points to the obvious. Give only to the emperor what the emperor is due. It is implicit in this command that the emperor has been receiving more than the emperor is due. That is still true today.
Give to God the things that are God’s. It is implicit in this command that God has been receiving less than what God is due. Sadly, this too is still the case.
How can this be, that we could possibly be giving more to our real world power sources than they are due and less to what our God is due? There must be a permanent uneasiness in our lives.
We do live in the here and now and our decisions about how we live do affect our lives and the lives of those around us and perhaps even the entire world. We do care, we know there are problems, and we are concerned when people lose so much. It could be us next time, we know that is true. The question then becomes, from where does our help come? Do we turn to Caesar or to God?
Since I have become a pastor it is not uncommon for me to see folk react differently when they discover my vocation. Often one of the first things they will say is, “I grew up going to church and I know I should be better about going now, but I have several really good excuses.” Questioning how they live their lives is the farthest thing from my mind, but implicit in their response is an unspoken feeling of guilt. The other frequent response is silence. I’m not sure which is more unsettling.
You may have heard it yourself when you invite someone to church. “I’m afraid we don’t have time for church,’ they say, ‘we’ve committed to soccer and cheerleading for our kids, we travel a lot, Bob loves his golf and then there is the hunting season. We have a full plate. Maybe in a few years we will find time for church. Right now it’s the kids and our family time.”
We hear in this response that not only have choices been made, they have been justified. Our priority is with the kids and our family time. Choices are made that all too often give to Caesar what rightfully belongs to God.
Jesus’ admonition to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s is a clever response, perhaps one that is appropriate for those of us who have trouble deciding what goes to Caesar and what to God. And we can have that trouble, the lines are not always clear. It is so easy to get caught up in living and the next thing we know life is all about this world and ultimately ourselves.
If we look again at the coin in this story it is clear, the coin was stamped with the image of Caesar. You and I, we often forget, are not created in any human image; we are created in the image of God. It is no simple matter, is it; to yield to God the things that are God’s. Not simple, nor is the price we pay insignificant. Jesus makes it clear, it is our very selves he is asking for, and we are the ones God expects to be rendered.
As Christians we must never forget, we are accountable solely to God for all the gifts we have received. The greatest of course being the gift of love. It is ours and it has come to us from God and we are accountable to God for it. Not so much for how we live in love, but for the way we use the love that has been given to us.
Our permanent uneasiness is real. It is not easy to balance church activities, living the life of Christ day and night, with everything else. We want to do it all. We do not want to sacrifice ‘alone time’, family time, travel time or shopping time. I couldn’t just pick on golfers and hunters without remembering shoppers too!
All too often we give God the balance left over when everything else has been done. God does not deserve the balance left over. God deserves to take first place in our lives.
A few years back I attended a conference on “God in the Workplace.” One of the stated purposes of the conference was to challenge us to not let our Monday-Friday work be at odds with our Sunday call to life-long ministry. In the course of the discussion, there were several important points that stayed with me.
The best being this, a business leader was sharing his frustration with a noted business expert that he found it impossible to organize, let alone accomplish, the multiplicity of priorities in his life. The expert stopped him immediately and challenged his notion of having priorities in life. His message was clear; life is not about having priorities, plural, it is about having a priority, singular. And that priority should be God.
How would that change your Monday-Friday? If your work and home and play life were not about priorities but about priority. If God were your single priority, how then would you give to God what is Gods? Would God then take first place in your life?
Thomas R. Kelly was a Quaker missionary, educator, speaker, writer and scholar. In A Testament of Devotion, he wrote: “We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us. Each of us tends to be, not a single self, but a whole committee of selves…. And each of our selves is in turn a rank individualist, not cooperative but shouting out his vote loudly for himself when the voting time comes….It is as if we have a chairman of our committee of many selves within us who does not integrate the many into one but who merely counts the votes at each decision, and leaves disgruntled minorities….We are not integrated. We are distraught. We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all….Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center….Most of us, I fear, haven not surrendered all else, in order to attend to the Holy within.”
I am the first to admit, it is not easy to surrender all, to give to God what is God’s. So often we find ourselves consumed by our perceived importance’s. How can we possibly have time for anything else?
Perhaps the worst sin is not to give to Caesar that which ought only to be given to God after all. Perhaps the greatest sin is not to recognize the difference. To fool ourselves into thinking all our busy work is somehow God’s work. Clearly there is a difference. Give to Caesar only what is Caesars, give to God only what is God’s.
I cannot tell you exactly where that line lies. I cannot in every case tell you what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. But God can, if we will only pay attention, God can. Powerfully, lovingly, with grace and a life long commitment, God is revealed to us by God. Especially these past few weeks and months when things have been so tough.
When rescuers came, God was there.
When shelters were opened. God was there.
When volunteers showed up with food, water, clothing and a helping hand and a kind word, God was there.
Wherever there are people who show up during tough times, God has shown up.
When their words are of comfort, and promise and healing, it is God who is speaking.
That is where the line is for those of us who believe. God brings it, God defines it and God reveals it to us, and often as not, through us. Through each of us God reveals God’s love to the world.
And because of this amazing truth, God deserves all we have in return, every bit of us, not just the balance left over.
What in the world is God doing with us here at Genesis Presbyterian Church? God is showing us that line between Caesar and between God. When we step out in ministry to our community, when we bring forth our resources for mission and outreach, when we gather for worship, and especially when we hold one another in our tears, God is here with us.
Let us give to God what is God’s, this church, and us with it.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
101611.gpc
It has been a tough past few weeks and months in the world. Disasters natural and man-made alike have filled our newspaper front pages and television and radio airwaves with acts of terror, shootings at work, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, draughts, and wildfires. People have lost their homes, their jobs, their communities and in some cases, their lives.
Ten years ago it was 9/11. Following 9/11, there was war. War still rages on. These past few weeks and months people have been killing one another with bombs and guns. There is great fear in the hearts of many this very moment.
Closer to home, when the hurricanes and the earthquakes and the fires stopped their carnage people turned first to one another for help and then to their governments. Largely the cry to the government was filled with judgment and criticism. In comparison, when we see what our fellow citizens have done, it is not hard to be overcome by their sincere generosity and, in many cases, self sacrifice as they have reached out and offered the only help they could, themselves.
When we hear about the human cost in those places of man made violence, we can only turn to the government for help. The armies are the first to respond during times of war or when insurgents strike innocent people or criminals take matters into their own hands.
In perhaps less obvious ways, we find we respond in similar ways in our day-to-day living. Be it our business at work, our business or interest in the community or our business when at leisure, we turn to the power systems in place for guidance, for help, or influence. How else do we get things done? How else do we know what to do to function safely in this world? There are simply a myriad of systems and processes in place that we must know about and know how to navigate in order to get things done.
If we doubt this, we need look no further than the recent wildfires to see how quickly many lives came to a dangerous stand still when these systems were slow to respond. Those first hours and days in some cases there were no safe shelters, there was no food, no water, people did not have access to medical care, to basic sanitation systems, and when night came all were left vulnerable to the forces that surrounded them.
These truths are real and very, very, frightening. Our sense of absolute vulnerability should be evident. We live on the edge of chaos and don’t realize it until our comfort is shaken by events like these past few weeks and months. Our safety is shaken and all too often we find our sadness is too close to home.
Quickly we recover though, we remember, at our birth we needed help at every level and we received it. But as adults we come to believe we actually have real power and security. It seems that once we have reached a certain age and status we think we can take care of ourselves. If this is our belief, Jesus warns us to be permanently uneasy.
Jesus, we find, was on to something life changing in this morning’s gospel story. After the Pharisees plotted once again to entrap him they asking him, ‘is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not’, Jesus’ answer surprised them, ‘show me the coin used for the tax.’ Being the master at these games of entrapment, Jesus asks, “Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered. “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.’
Oh how wise and clear. Jesus points to the obvious. Give only to the emperor what the emperor is due. It is implicit in this command that the emperor has been receiving more than the emperor is due. That is still true today.
Give to God the things that are God’s. It is implicit in this command that God has been receiving less than what God is due. Sadly, this too is still the case.
How can this be, that we could possibly be giving more to our real world power sources than they are due and less to what our God is due? There must be a permanent uneasiness in our lives.
We do live in the here and now and our decisions about how we live do affect our lives and the lives of those around us and perhaps even the entire world. We do care, we know there are problems, and we are concerned when people lose so much. It could be us next time, we know that is true. The question then becomes, from where does our help come? Do we turn to Caesar or to God?
Since I have become a pastor it is not uncommon for me to see folk react differently when they discover my vocation. Often one of the first things they will say is, “I grew up going to church and I know I should be better about going now, but I have several really good excuses.” Questioning how they live their lives is the farthest thing from my mind, but implicit in their response is an unspoken feeling of guilt. The other frequent response is silence. I’m not sure which is more unsettling.
You may have heard it yourself when you invite someone to church. “I’m afraid we don’t have time for church,’ they say, ‘we’ve committed to soccer and cheerleading for our kids, we travel a lot, Bob loves his golf and then there is the hunting season. We have a full plate. Maybe in a few years we will find time for church. Right now it’s the kids and our family time.”
We hear in this response that not only have choices been made, they have been justified. Our priority is with the kids and our family time. Choices are made that all too often give to Caesar what rightfully belongs to God.
Jesus’ admonition to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s is a clever response, perhaps one that is appropriate for those of us who have trouble deciding what goes to Caesar and what to God. And we can have that trouble, the lines are not always clear. It is so easy to get caught up in living and the next thing we know life is all about this world and ultimately ourselves.
If we look again at the coin in this story it is clear, the coin was stamped with the image of Caesar. You and I, we often forget, are not created in any human image; we are created in the image of God. It is no simple matter, is it; to yield to God the things that are God’s. Not simple, nor is the price we pay insignificant. Jesus makes it clear, it is our very selves he is asking for, and we are the ones God expects to be rendered.
As Christians we must never forget, we are accountable solely to God for all the gifts we have received. The greatest of course being the gift of love. It is ours and it has come to us from God and we are accountable to God for it. Not so much for how we live in love, but for the way we use the love that has been given to us.
Our permanent uneasiness is real. It is not easy to balance church activities, living the life of Christ day and night, with everything else. We want to do it all. We do not want to sacrifice ‘alone time’, family time, travel time or shopping time. I couldn’t just pick on golfers and hunters without remembering shoppers too!
All too often we give God the balance left over when everything else has been done. God does not deserve the balance left over. God deserves to take first place in our lives.
A few years back I attended a conference on “God in the Workplace.” One of the stated purposes of the conference was to challenge us to not let our Monday-Friday work be at odds with our Sunday call to life-long ministry. In the course of the discussion, there were several important points that stayed with me.
The best being this, a business leader was sharing his frustration with a noted business expert that he found it impossible to organize, let alone accomplish, the multiplicity of priorities in his life. The expert stopped him immediately and challenged his notion of having priorities in life. His message was clear; life is not about having priorities, plural, it is about having a priority, singular. And that priority should be God.
How would that change your Monday-Friday? If your work and home and play life were not about priorities but about priority. If God were your single priority, how then would you give to God what is Gods? Would God then take first place in your life?
Thomas R. Kelly was a Quaker missionary, educator, speaker, writer and scholar. In A Testament of Devotion, he wrote: “We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us. Each of us tends to be, not a single self, but a whole committee of selves…. And each of our selves is in turn a rank individualist, not cooperative but shouting out his vote loudly for himself when the voting time comes….It is as if we have a chairman of our committee of many selves within us who does not integrate the many into one but who merely counts the votes at each decision, and leaves disgruntled minorities….We are not integrated. We are distraught. We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all….Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center….Most of us, I fear, haven not surrendered all else, in order to attend to the Holy within.”
I am the first to admit, it is not easy to surrender all, to give to God what is God’s. So often we find ourselves consumed by our perceived importance’s. How can we possibly have time for anything else?
Perhaps the worst sin is not to give to Caesar that which ought only to be given to God after all. Perhaps the greatest sin is not to recognize the difference. To fool ourselves into thinking all our busy work is somehow God’s work. Clearly there is a difference. Give to Caesar only what is Caesars, give to God only what is God’s.
I cannot tell you exactly where that line lies. I cannot in every case tell you what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. But God can, if we will only pay attention, God can. Powerfully, lovingly, with grace and a life long commitment, God is revealed to us by God. Especially these past few weeks and months when things have been so tough.
When rescuers came, God was there.
When shelters were opened. God was there.
When volunteers showed up with food, water, clothing and a helping hand and a kind word, God was there.
Wherever there are people who show up during tough times, God has shown up.
When their words are of comfort, and promise and healing, it is God who is speaking.
That is where the line is for those of us who believe. God brings it, God defines it and God reveals it to us, and often as not, through us. Through each of us God reveals God’s love to the world.
And because of this amazing truth, God deserves all we have in return, every bit of us, not just the balance left over.
What in the world is God doing with us here at Genesis Presbyterian Church? God is showing us that line between Caesar and between God. When we step out in ministry to our community, when we bring forth our resources for mission and outreach, when we gather for worship, and especially when we hold one another in our tears, God is here with us.
Let us give to God what is God’s, this church, and us with it.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
101611.gpc
Monday, October 10, 2011
Many Are Called, but Few Are Chosen
09 October 2011 Many Are Called, but Few Are Chosen Matthew 22:1-14
We now have our third parable in as many Sundays. The Marriage Feast we read this morning is the last. Knowing there is that moment when the whole story turns we may not have expected to consider Jesus’ immeasurable blessings are only for those who wear the wedding robe.
A few years ago, at the Nashville Festival of Homiletics, Tom Long, an author of many books about preaching, told this story. He, Fred Craddock and Barbara Brown Taylor, who also have written extensively on preaching, were sitting in the stands at a baseball game in Atlanta when suddenly the ushers descended on a man seated a few rows in front of them. They argued back and forth with him for a few moments, and then, to the surprise of everyone in the vicinity, took the man by the arms and frog-marched him out of the stadium. No one knew why the ushers had targeted this man; no one had ever seen anything like it. Everyone just sat in stunned silence, our three preachers among them. Then Fred Craddock shook his head, gestured at the empty seat, and said to his friends, “Must not have had a wedding garment.”
Perhaps we consider a text like this morning’s and we feel like one of the onlookers at that baseball game: speechless. We may wonder, what do those in charge of the wedding crowd know that we don’t know?
On the surface the story seems simple enough and then that turn. The king’s son marries and the king throws a party. He invites many guests: anyone and everyone it seems. But, the invited guests snub the king and his son and the wedding
banquet. The king is rightly enraged and radically changes the guest list. He starts over and invites more guests: anyone and everyone. This time, to his surprise, the guests come. Perhaps they heard what happened to the original group.
The king begins to inspect his guests and discovers one inappropriately dressed. Again he is enraged and orders his attendants to “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Then we hear the final decree; “Many are called, but few are chosen.”
If we consider this parable as representing entre into the kingdom of God we may be somewhat taken aback that our salvation comes down to a dress code. We may be like those at the baseball game.
No one knew why the attendants took this man out of the wedding feast. Surely he did or said something insulting or threatening or rude. This cannot be about what he wore. Everyone must have sat in stunned silence. Has the king not heard of what happened in Matthew 6 with the lilies of the field and not worrying about what we wear?
Perhaps we have this parable because the parents of teenagers in Jesus’ time asked him for help. Perhaps this surprise that God now expects proper dress in a proper place is Jesus’ way of giving parents a dress code and the weapon of profound biblical truth to help carry the day.
We just might expect a parent say, “Why am I worrying about clothing, you ask? Well, after you’ve considered the lilies of the field, how they neither toil nor they spin, consider the wedding guest who forgot to wear a coat and tie. My suggestion is that you ditch the flip flops this minute, march back upstairs, and find something decent to wear to church unless you would like to spend the rest of the day in outer darkness, where I promise you there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Good response aside, nothing Jesus says gets to be taken in isolation, without at least remembering his other words and teachings. We can’t decide once and for all which is more important: Matthew 6 or Matthew 22? We have to read them both, which is daunting when you think about it. Consider the lilies and consider the wedding guest!
We just as well consider the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree. They are all expressions of extremes, of times when Jesus seems to go almost overboard in his reaction to something. A fig tree that doesn’t produce fruit? Wham! Curses to it! A wedding guest without a wedding garment? Wham! Off with his head! Indeed, all are important, all matter, they all save. But how?
What may strike us about these stories is that Jesus is making a point about integrity: Be who you are. Let your life express whose you are. Otherwise, you are as welcome at the tables as a termite and about as useful.
Jesus is lifting us up to be who he has made us to be. If we are a fig tree, by golly, then be a fig tree! Make figs! If we are a wedding guest, for goodness sake, then let’s look like we are at a wedding instead of going to the dentist. No offense to dentists, but take off the long face, change the droopy attitude, put on your party clothes and celebrate – because this is a celebration! And anyone who is not happy to be here – and happy to see who else is here – is officially uninvited!
We have been in worship at other churches, never here at Genesis of course, where it looks like people are about as happy to be in church as Eeyore. We might never guess, to look at them, that salvation is a good thing. We would never know, to hear them tell it, that Christ has made a difference. They have no wedding garment – no outer sign that this really is a party, that we really are, as David Buttrick puts it, “being saved,” that the gospel is really and truly good news!
Maybe the reason for their reserve has more to do with upbringing and custom than stinginess our sourness; maybe. Or maybe they find it hard to put on a wedding garment that everyone else, like taxpayers, sinners, and prostitutes are wearing, too.
Sometimes I am like that. Sometimes I have a hard time celebrating when I look around and notice who else has been invited to the party. Especially when they so clearly don’t deserve to be there. Sometimes I deliberately under dress, or choose to sit and pout in my flip flops while everyone else is dancing in their party shoes. Sometimes I don’t put on the wedding garment that Jesus has already laid out for me, freshly laundered, on my bed. On those days, just send the ushers in after me.
The free character of God’s grace is extended to all who God calls. The free character of God’s grace, however, does not mean that grace is ‘bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort,” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed. The grace of God remains costly and is never “cheap grace,” that “mortal enemy of our church.” “Above all,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “grace is costly, because it was costly to God, because it costs God the life of God’s Son…and because nothing can be cheap to us which is costly to God…Costly grace is the incarnation of God.”
Matthew’s version of the parable opens the doors of God’s kingdom wide, but it does not forget that this kingdom has a king and that this kingdom cannot be converted to conform to our own expectations. While many are called, few are chosen.
About this passage Emil Brunner asks, “But what happens to God’s invitation?” For Brunner it’s not refusals but excuses given by people who are preoccupied and allow other things to interfere. In this context Jesus pronounces the word of judgment and has the servants go into the street “where the gypsies live” and invite people to the banquet.
Guests arrive, but there is an intruder, an individual without the wedding garment. Brunner sheds light on the passage by explaining the oriental custom of the host providing each guest with a wedding garment that the intruder, out of laziness, had not put on. It serves as a severe warning to those Christians who don’t discard their rags. “They want to believe but not to obey,” argues Brunner, “to enjoy and rejoice but not to change their ways.” As Brunner explains, they want both God’s love and to keep their self-love, God’s mercy and their own self-centered hearts.
Brunner consoles listeners by reminding them that Jesus is not expecting perfect obedience overnight, but that divine forgiveness calls us to forgiveness as well. In the closing words of Brunner, “The wedding garment is laid out; all we have to do is to put it on.”
We are to put it on because we are called. The wedding garment, Jesus Christ is laid out for us. All we have to do is put him on. All we have to do is put on the life of Christ, to cloth ourselves in God’s costly grace, Jesus Christ.
But we know that sometimes we follow another way. We pay no attention and go off – one to his or her field, another to his or her business. Some seize the king’s servants, mistreat them and discard them. The king is enraged. He sends his army and destroys our other way.
But we are wedding guests. So be wedding guests. Be who you are, accept the invitation. Accept the body of Jesus Christ to be the wedding garment. We should take off the long face, change the droopy attitude, put on our party clothes and celebrate.
Kim Peavey, who writes and farms in New Hampshire, tells of never being smote on the head, or anywhere else, for that matter, with religious conviction. Yet, after years of milking cows, traveling, graduate study in poetry, teaching college writing, shoveling horse manure and stints as a researcher and writer, she found herself applying to theological schools. This despite, as she says, she can’t even say the word prayer out loud, much less the J-word (Jesus, that would be).
All during first-week orientation, she alternately cries on a rock outdoors by herself and tries not to cry during meetings, worship service, and getting-to-know-each-other games. There are many people at seminary, a great diversity of people, some of whom are friendly, and who look as alarmed at this churchy situation as she does. There are also other people, people who do not choose the vegetarian entrée, people who drink out of Styrofoam cups, people who look like they think she should go forth, be fruitful and multiply, or at least cover her head.
She decided to stay, maybe through her first class. Then, slowly, she discovers she is a wedding guest and she graduates and funny things happen. People think she knows things. They ask her the words to “Amazing Grace.” They ask her about church history, they ask her for a bible, and people ask her to perform wedding ceremonies. She finds herself being who she is.
Then a friend who is dying of cancer asks her to lead her funeral service. She is so terrified by this that she realizes she must do it. A poem comes to her. She sends it to her dying friend. She says, “Read it at my service, please.” When she dies, she does.
In the final paragraph she writes. “In the end, I do not become an ordained minister. Neither do I imagine that I will ever find myself at peace with the complexity, difficulty, and luminosity of the Christian Church. But I have come to a truer, more fruitful engagement with religion, with my work of writing, and with the world, complete with all its non-vegetarian non-feminist non-environmentalists. I have become less afraid, more willing, more open. I have become myself, or more myself; and I have come to know that this in itself is good. And right. And holy.”
Be yourself, or more yourself, a wedding guest. Accept the invitation to life in Jesus Christ. Put on the new person of Jesus Christ and celebrate the good news – for this is a celebration!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever, Amen.
Additional helps:
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Discipleship, Barbara Green and Reinhardt Krauss, tr. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 43, 45.
“Image: Art, Faith, Mystery,” Spring 2011, Number 69, Pgs. 87-98.
“Lectionary Homiletics,” Volume XIX, Number 6, pgs. 14-23.
100911.gpc
We now have our third parable in as many Sundays. The Marriage Feast we read this morning is the last. Knowing there is that moment when the whole story turns we may not have expected to consider Jesus’ immeasurable blessings are only for those who wear the wedding robe.
A few years ago, at the Nashville Festival of Homiletics, Tom Long, an author of many books about preaching, told this story. He, Fred Craddock and Barbara Brown Taylor, who also have written extensively on preaching, were sitting in the stands at a baseball game in Atlanta when suddenly the ushers descended on a man seated a few rows in front of them. They argued back and forth with him for a few moments, and then, to the surprise of everyone in the vicinity, took the man by the arms and frog-marched him out of the stadium. No one knew why the ushers had targeted this man; no one had ever seen anything like it. Everyone just sat in stunned silence, our three preachers among them. Then Fred Craddock shook his head, gestured at the empty seat, and said to his friends, “Must not have had a wedding garment.”
Perhaps we consider a text like this morning’s and we feel like one of the onlookers at that baseball game: speechless. We may wonder, what do those in charge of the wedding crowd know that we don’t know?
On the surface the story seems simple enough and then that turn. The king’s son marries and the king throws a party. He invites many guests: anyone and everyone it seems. But, the invited guests snub the king and his son and the wedding
banquet. The king is rightly enraged and radically changes the guest list. He starts over and invites more guests: anyone and everyone. This time, to his surprise, the guests come. Perhaps they heard what happened to the original group.
The king begins to inspect his guests and discovers one inappropriately dressed. Again he is enraged and orders his attendants to “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Then we hear the final decree; “Many are called, but few are chosen.”
If we consider this parable as representing entre into the kingdom of God we may be somewhat taken aback that our salvation comes down to a dress code. We may be like those at the baseball game.
No one knew why the attendants took this man out of the wedding feast. Surely he did or said something insulting or threatening or rude. This cannot be about what he wore. Everyone must have sat in stunned silence. Has the king not heard of what happened in Matthew 6 with the lilies of the field and not worrying about what we wear?
Perhaps we have this parable because the parents of teenagers in Jesus’ time asked him for help. Perhaps this surprise that God now expects proper dress in a proper place is Jesus’ way of giving parents a dress code and the weapon of profound biblical truth to help carry the day.
We just might expect a parent say, “Why am I worrying about clothing, you ask? Well, after you’ve considered the lilies of the field, how they neither toil nor they spin, consider the wedding guest who forgot to wear a coat and tie. My suggestion is that you ditch the flip flops this minute, march back upstairs, and find something decent to wear to church unless you would like to spend the rest of the day in outer darkness, where I promise you there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Good response aside, nothing Jesus says gets to be taken in isolation, without at least remembering his other words and teachings. We can’t decide once and for all which is more important: Matthew 6 or Matthew 22? We have to read them both, which is daunting when you think about it. Consider the lilies and consider the wedding guest!
We just as well consider the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree. They are all expressions of extremes, of times when Jesus seems to go almost overboard in his reaction to something. A fig tree that doesn’t produce fruit? Wham! Curses to it! A wedding guest without a wedding garment? Wham! Off with his head! Indeed, all are important, all matter, they all save. But how?
What may strike us about these stories is that Jesus is making a point about integrity: Be who you are. Let your life express whose you are. Otherwise, you are as welcome at the tables as a termite and about as useful.
Jesus is lifting us up to be who he has made us to be. If we are a fig tree, by golly, then be a fig tree! Make figs! If we are a wedding guest, for goodness sake, then let’s look like we are at a wedding instead of going to the dentist. No offense to dentists, but take off the long face, change the droopy attitude, put on your party clothes and celebrate – because this is a celebration! And anyone who is not happy to be here – and happy to see who else is here – is officially uninvited!
We have been in worship at other churches, never here at Genesis of course, where it looks like people are about as happy to be in church as Eeyore. We might never guess, to look at them, that salvation is a good thing. We would never know, to hear them tell it, that Christ has made a difference. They have no wedding garment – no outer sign that this really is a party, that we really are, as David Buttrick puts it, “being saved,” that the gospel is really and truly good news!
Maybe the reason for their reserve has more to do with upbringing and custom than stinginess our sourness; maybe. Or maybe they find it hard to put on a wedding garment that everyone else, like taxpayers, sinners, and prostitutes are wearing, too.
Sometimes I am like that. Sometimes I have a hard time celebrating when I look around and notice who else has been invited to the party. Especially when they so clearly don’t deserve to be there. Sometimes I deliberately under dress, or choose to sit and pout in my flip flops while everyone else is dancing in their party shoes. Sometimes I don’t put on the wedding garment that Jesus has already laid out for me, freshly laundered, on my bed. On those days, just send the ushers in after me.
The free character of God’s grace is extended to all who God calls. The free character of God’s grace, however, does not mean that grace is ‘bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort,” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed. The grace of God remains costly and is never “cheap grace,” that “mortal enemy of our church.” “Above all,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “grace is costly, because it was costly to God, because it costs God the life of God’s Son…and because nothing can be cheap to us which is costly to God…Costly grace is the incarnation of God.”
Matthew’s version of the parable opens the doors of God’s kingdom wide, but it does not forget that this kingdom has a king and that this kingdom cannot be converted to conform to our own expectations. While many are called, few are chosen.
About this passage Emil Brunner asks, “But what happens to God’s invitation?” For Brunner it’s not refusals but excuses given by people who are preoccupied and allow other things to interfere. In this context Jesus pronounces the word of judgment and has the servants go into the street “where the gypsies live” and invite people to the banquet.
Guests arrive, but there is an intruder, an individual without the wedding garment. Brunner sheds light on the passage by explaining the oriental custom of the host providing each guest with a wedding garment that the intruder, out of laziness, had not put on. It serves as a severe warning to those Christians who don’t discard their rags. “They want to believe but not to obey,” argues Brunner, “to enjoy and rejoice but not to change their ways.” As Brunner explains, they want both God’s love and to keep their self-love, God’s mercy and their own self-centered hearts.
Brunner consoles listeners by reminding them that Jesus is not expecting perfect obedience overnight, but that divine forgiveness calls us to forgiveness as well. In the closing words of Brunner, “The wedding garment is laid out; all we have to do is to put it on.”
We are to put it on because we are called. The wedding garment, Jesus Christ is laid out for us. All we have to do is put him on. All we have to do is put on the life of Christ, to cloth ourselves in God’s costly grace, Jesus Christ.
But we know that sometimes we follow another way. We pay no attention and go off – one to his or her field, another to his or her business. Some seize the king’s servants, mistreat them and discard them. The king is enraged. He sends his army and destroys our other way.
But we are wedding guests. So be wedding guests. Be who you are, accept the invitation. Accept the body of Jesus Christ to be the wedding garment. We should take off the long face, change the droopy attitude, put on our party clothes and celebrate.
Kim Peavey, who writes and farms in New Hampshire, tells of never being smote on the head, or anywhere else, for that matter, with religious conviction. Yet, after years of milking cows, traveling, graduate study in poetry, teaching college writing, shoveling horse manure and stints as a researcher and writer, she found herself applying to theological schools. This despite, as she says, she can’t even say the word prayer out loud, much less the J-word (Jesus, that would be).
All during first-week orientation, she alternately cries on a rock outdoors by herself and tries not to cry during meetings, worship service, and getting-to-know-each-other games. There are many people at seminary, a great diversity of people, some of whom are friendly, and who look as alarmed at this churchy situation as she does. There are also other people, people who do not choose the vegetarian entrée, people who drink out of Styrofoam cups, people who look like they think she should go forth, be fruitful and multiply, or at least cover her head.
She decided to stay, maybe through her first class. Then, slowly, she discovers she is a wedding guest and she graduates and funny things happen. People think she knows things. They ask her the words to “Amazing Grace.” They ask her about church history, they ask her for a bible, and people ask her to perform wedding ceremonies. She finds herself being who she is.
Then a friend who is dying of cancer asks her to lead her funeral service. She is so terrified by this that she realizes she must do it. A poem comes to her. She sends it to her dying friend. She says, “Read it at my service, please.” When she dies, she does.
In the final paragraph she writes. “In the end, I do not become an ordained minister. Neither do I imagine that I will ever find myself at peace with the complexity, difficulty, and luminosity of the Christian Church. But I have come to a truer, more fruitful engagement with religion, with my work of writing, and with the world, complete with all its non-vegetarian non-feminist non-environmentalists. I have become less afraid, more willing, more open. I have become myself, or more myself; and I have come to know that this in itself is good. And right. And holy.”
Be yourself, or more yourself, a wedding guest. Accept the invitation to life in Jesus Christ. Put on the new person of Jesus Christ and celebrate the good news – for this is a celebration!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever, Amen.
Additional helps:
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Discipleship, Barbara Green and Reinhardt Krauss, tr. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 43, 45.
“Image: Art, Faith, Mystery,” Spring 2011, Number 69, Pgs. 87-98.
“Lectionary Homiletics,” Volume XIX, Number 6, pgs. 14-23.
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Monday, October 3, 2011
02 October 2011 Matthew 21:33-46
02 October 2011 Matthew 21:33-46
The questions we hear and often ask ourselves are seldom as innocent as they seem. One pastor tells of a visit with a lifelong member of the church who had not attended for a long time. As they talked the parishioner was curious, ‘How are they doing down at the church?” What a great theological question, “How are they doing down at the church?” From that question our pastor had her sermon for the next Sunday. She called it, “We Are They.”
Her theme was woven around the truth that we are the “they” in this morning’s gospel. We are the tenants who were leased the vineyard. We are they and the not so innocent question that should concern us comes in verse 20, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
Throughout church history the church has pointed to a lot of “theys.” Sometimes the list pointed to the religious officials of that day like the Pharisees and the chief priests. But the theys also included Gentiles, women, the uncircumcised, eunuchs, Judaizers, sinners, and Barbarians. People in every age have had a tendency to put distance between themselves and the theys.
It’s like being back in school when some of our classmates would get caught doing something we might now consider casual and being sent to the principal’s office. What will he do to them? And when they get home. What will their parents do to them? It’s like listening to the terrible things people do to one another on the news? What will they do to them? We want to stay away from those theys.
According to Matthew’s gospel the owner had already done a lot of the heavy lifting. He had “planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower.” And then he left his vineyard in the hands of the tenants who at harvest time seize his slaves, beat one, kill one, and stone another. Finally he sent his son and they killed him too.
It is painful to consider we may be the tenants in this parable. We understand God has left the vineyard in our care. But we are faithful people and we work hard to bring about God’s kingdom.
Leaving the vineyard in our care might remind us of that first creation garden in the Genesis story where God first left God’s kingdom in our hands. Like Adam and Eve and these vineyard tenants we have made our mistakes.
The first involves the land. We thought the land belonged to us. We forgot we were to be stewards of someone else’s property. The tenants create a false sense of ownership in their efforts to secure their perceived inheritance. They think, we are the ones slaving over the land. How dare the owner send servant after servant and finally his own son to collect what we have worked very hard to cultivate and grow and harvest. They felt they were due the inheritance, the land and its bounty. How dare anyone threaten to take what is rightfully theirs?
Before we rush to condemn these tenants we might consider for a moment how well we have done with the vineyard we have been given. Have we considered the jungle we have overtly or covertly made or allowed to be made? War; terror; ecological disaster; families in disarray; confusion; fear and pessimism everywhere; values twisted and the old words given new and strange definitions.
We protest, of course, we are not they. It isn’t our fault. We blame it on someone else. Like in Genesis the man blames the woman. The woman blames the snake. I guess the snake had no one to blame, or did not care.
We blame it on the tenants before us or the tenants here now. We blame it on the government or the hypocritical religious institution. Some of the darkest chapters in the life of the church are the times we blamed then punished others using chapter and verse from this parable.
In our way of thinking the words they and we were poles apart. Jesus will not let us judge so easily. He brings the two words and the two different worlds of they and we closer together.
Human beings have spent a lot of time and energy arguing about judgment and we know well the justification, “An eye for an eye.” The scholars tell us, “An eye for an eye” was originally an attempt to keep the urge to retaliate in check. Given the human appetite for revenge even “an eye for an eye” is hard to enforce.
Jesus spends a lot of time talking about judgment. He tells story after story, parable after parable. This particular text has been noted as Matthew’s way of showing the end times: the fall of Jerusalem, the diaspora of the Jews, the rise of Christianity among the Gentiles.
But, as Professor Anna Carter Florence has suggested, what if this wildly outrageous story is simply that: a wildly outrageous story about a world we have yet to meet? What if this is a story that contrasts human judgment with the as-yet-unexperienced-and-unimagined divine judgment of a God who is so far beyond us, that we cannot even apply the same patterns of justice?
In the human realm, when wicked tenants behave like this, we know what happens. We have perfectly credible, reasonable, rational ways to judge those caught in the act, and this act is particularly foul. So, what would we do? Well, we would put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give the owner of the vineyard the produce at harvest time!
Notice that Jesus doesn’t exactly confirm us in our perfectly credible, reasonable, rational judgment. Instead, he offers a cryptic exegetical comment, “Have you never read in the scriptures, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
The church today is having a hard time. A new song book is coming out soon because we cannot decide what songs to sing, we cannot decide what instruments to play, we have tried other ways and still cannot all agree on what liturgy to use, if any, we cannot agree on what time to meet, or what is appropriate attire for the occasion or how the building should be configured. Perhaps our trouble may be the same as the Pharisees. We forget this is God’s thing we do here on Sunday morning’s. We forget we are tenants only. We forget the owner of the vineyard will one day come and ask us for an accounting.
Maybe our most important calling is to stop pointing fingers. Maybe it is not the liberals or the conservative we should blame. Maybe it is not the government or the immigrants or the extremists or the terrorists or even our wayward parents. We are they. We are to faithfully tend the garden we have been given. We are to receive those God sends our way. We are to make sure that when God walks down our street and stops at our house we do not miss God.
How much easier to point fingers at those other folk over there. It’s just too hard otherwise to consider our role and responsibility to the vineyard, to consider what it means to be a tenant in this year of 2011 here at Genesis church?
The call to fidelity, which means tending the vineyard, begins at home. It does not end here but it starts here. To participate in the church is to risk an encounter like that moment when the prophet Nathan confronted King David after he had taken another man’s wife and foretold the fateful words, “Thou are the man.”
Oh, if we could come to church assured that the enemy is not us, that we are not the man or the woman on whom God’s kingdom depends or on whom God’s judgment falls!
One of our greatest challenges in this matter of divine judgment may be that we live in a society that tends to fear judgment. The “problem’ is always somewhere else other than here. The “sin” is always with folks other than us.
A visitor recalled sitting in a small, rural church in the mountains of North Carolina during a particularly pointed sermon. The preacher, as the visitor recalled, was preaching a text from Jeremiah in which the prophet catalogs Israel’s multiple sins. And then the preacher, as preachers often do, began to talk about the sins of the congregation, condemning them for their assorted instances of their sin. Then, as if the preacher sensed that the attentiveness of his congregation was wandering the preacher blurted out, “I’m talking about you! And you, and you and you!”
This was a powerful moment. It is so easy to have a sermon bounce off our head and hit someone in the pew behind us. “I’m talking about you!” leaves no rebound.
I wonder if Jesus is reminding us that ‘what we would do’ is not what God would do. In the realms of God, judgment will not look like it does in the human realm. The vineyard will bear another kind of fruit. The old ways will be crushed beneath an open tombstone and death, where will thy sting be, then?
All we can say is what we know: God will forgive seventy times seven. God will welcome the prodigal home. God will open the banquet to tax collectors and prostitutes. God will raise the dead to new life. What we know about what God would do is that it is completely incredible, unreasonable, and irrational; not at all what we would do.
And we need not be reminded that many of us are lousy gardeners. Not all. Some of us can plant anything and make it grow. But Jesus said we all have been given this plot of land. It was in good shape when God gave it to us. Now our task is the same as those who came before us. It is to leave the garden better than we found it.
If this is true it will take all of us to make this garden lush and green and productive again. Hopefully we will work to reach out and join hands and hearts to our brothers and sisters and even strangers and enemies. Isn’t this the kind of world we want to leave for those who follow us?
Maybe it is about us after all.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. One God, now and forever. Amen.
Additional resources:
“Pulpit Resource,” Volume 36, Number 4, 2008, pgs. 5-8.
“Lectionary Homiletics,” Volume XIX, Number 6, pgs. 11-12.
100211.gpc
The questions we hear and often ask ourselves are seldom as innocent as they seem. One pastor tells of a visit with a lifelong member of the church who had not attended for a long time. As they talked the parishioner was curious, ‘How are they doing down at the church?” What a great theological question, “How are they doing down at the church?” From that question our pastor had her sermon for the next Sunday. She called it, “We Are They.”
Her theme was woven around the truth that we are the “they” in this morning’s gospel. We are the tenants who were leased the vineyard. We are they and the not so innocent question that should concern us comes in verse 20, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
Throughout church history the church has pointed to a lot of “theys.” Sometimes the list pointed to the religious officials of that day like the Pharisees and the chief priests. But the theys also included Gentiles, women, the uncircumcised, eunuchs, Judaizers, sinners, and Barbarians. People in every age have had a tendency to put distance between themselves and the theys.
It’s like being back in school when some of our classmates would get caught doing something we might now consider casual and being sent to the principal’s office. What will he do to them? And when they get home. What will their parents do to them? It’s like listening to the terrible things people do to one another on the news? What will they do to them? We want to stay away from those theys.
According to Matthew’s gospel the owner had already done a lot of the heavy lifting. He had “planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower.” And then he left his vineyard in the hands of the tenants who at harvest time seize his slaves, beat one, kill one, and stone another. Finally he sent his son and they killed him too.
It is painful to consider we may be the tenants in this parable. We understand God has left the vineyard in our care. But we are faithful people and we work hard to bring about God’s kingdom.
Leaving the vineyard in our care might remind us of that first creation garden in the Genesis story where God first left God’s kingdom in our hands. Like Adam and Eve and these vineyard tenants we have made our mistakes.
The first involves the land. We thought the land belonged to us. We forgot we were to be stewards of someone else’s property. The tenants create a false sense of ownership in their efforts to secure their perceived inheritance. They think, we are the ones slaving over the land. How dare the owner send servant after servant and finally his own son to collect what we have worked very hard to cultivate and grow and harvest. They felt they were due the inheritance, the land and its bounty. How dare anyone threaten to take what is rightfully theirs?
Before we rush to condemn these tenants we might consider for a moment how well we have done with the vineyard we have been given. Have we considered the jungle we have overtly or covertly made or allowed to be made? War; terror; ecological disaster; families in disarray; confusion; fear and pessimism everywhere; values twisted and the old words given new and strange definitions.
We protest, of course, we are not they. It isn’t our fault. We blame it on someone else. Like in Genesis the man blames the woman. The woman blames the snake. I guess the snake had no one to blame, or did not care.
We blame it on the tenants before us or the tenants here now. We blame it on the government or the hypocritical religious institution. Some of the darkest chapters in the life of the church are the times we blamed then punished others using chapter and verse from this parable.
In our way of thinking the words they and we were poles apart. Jesus will not let us judge so easily. He brings the two words and the two different worlds of they and we closer together.
Human beings have spent a lot of time and energy arguing about judgment and we know well the justification, “An eye for an eye.” The scholars tell us, “An eye for an eye” was originally an attempt to keep the urge to retaliate in check. Given the human appetite for revenge even “an eye for an eye” is hard to enforce.
Jesus spends a lot of time talking about judgment. He tells story after story, parable after parable. This particular text has been noted as Matthew’s way of showing the end times: the fall of Jerusalem, the diaspora of the Jews, the rise of Christianity among the Gentiles.
But, as Professor Anna Carter Florence has suggested, what if this wildly outrageous story is simply that: a wildly outrageous story about a world we have yet to meet? What if this is a story that contrasts human judgment with the as-yet-unexperienced-and-unimagined divine judgment of a God who is so far beyond us, that we cannot even apply the same patterns of justice?
In the human realm, when wicked tenants behave like this, we know what happens. We have perfectly credible, reasonable, rational ways to judge those caught in the act, and this act is particularly foul. So, what would we do? Well, we would put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give the owner of the vineyard the produce at harvest time!
Notice that Jesus doesn’t exactly confirm us in our perfectly credible, reasonable, rational judgment. Instead, he offers a cryptic exegetical comment, “Have you never read in the scriptures, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
The church today is having a hard time. A new song book is coming out soon because we cannot decide what songs to sing, we cannot decide what instruments to play, we have tried other ways and still cannot all agree on what liturgy to use, if any, we cannot agree on what time to meet, or what is appropriate attire for the occasion or how the building should be configured. Perhaps our trouble may be the same as the Pharisees. We forget this is God’s thing we do here on Sunday morning’s. We forget we are tenants only. We forget the owner of the vineyard will one day come and ask us for an accounting.
Maybe our most important calling is to stop pointing fingers. Maybe it is not the liberals or the conservative we should blame. Maybe it is not the government or the immigrants or the extremists or the terrorists or even our wayward parents. We are they. We are to faithfully tend the garden we have been given. We are to receive those God sends our way. We are to make sure that when God walks down our street and stops at our house we do not miss God.
How much easier to point fingers at those other folk over there. It’s just too hard otherwise to consider our role and responsibility to the vineyard, to consider what it means to be a tenant in this year of 2011 here at Genesis church?
The call to fidelity, which means tending the vineyard, begins at home. It does not end here but it starts here. To participate in the church is to risk an encounter like that moment when the prophet Nathan confronted King David after he had taken another man’s wife and foretold the fateful words, “Thou are the man.”
Oh, if we could come to church assured that the enemy is not us, that we are not the man or the woman on whom God’s kingdom depends or on whom God’s judgment falls!
One of our greatest challenges in this matter of divine judgment may be that we live in a society that tends to fear judgment. The “problem’ is always somewhere else other than here. The “sin” is always with folks other than us.
A visitor recalled sitting in a small, rural church in the mountains of North Carolina during a particularly pointed sermon. The preacher, as the visitor recalled, was preaching a text from Jeremiah in which the prophet catalogs Israel’s multiple sins. And then the preacher, as preachers often do, began to talk about the sins of the congregation, condemning them for their assorted instances of their sin. Then, as if the preacher sensed that the attentiveness of his congregation was wandering the preacher blurted out, “I’m talking about you! And you, and you and you!”
This was a powerful moment. It is so easy to have a sermon bounce off our head and hit someone in the pew behind us. “I’m talking about you!” leaves no rebound.
I wonder if Jesus is reminding us that ‘what we would do’ is not what God would do. In the realms of God, judgment will not look like it does in the human realm. The vineyard will bear another kind of fruit. The old ways will be crushed beneath an open tombstone and death, where will thy sting be, then?
All we can say is what we know: God will forgive seventy times seven. God will welcome the prodigal home. God will open the banquet to tax collectors and prostitutes. God will raise the dead to new life. What we know about what God would do is that it is completely incredible, unreasonable, and irrational; not at all what we would do.
And we need not be reminded that many of us are lousy gardeners. Not all. Some of us can plant anything and make it grow. But Jesus said we all have been given this plot of land. It was in good shape when God gave it to us. Now our task is the same as those who came before us. It is to leave the garden better than we found it.
If this is true it will take all of us to make this garden lush and green and productive again. Hopefully we will work to reach out and join hands and hearts to our brothers and sisters and even strangers and enemies. Isn’t this the kind of world we want to leave for those who follow us?
Maybe it is about us after all.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. One God, now and forever. Amen.
Additional resources:
“Pulpit Resource,” Volume 36, Number 4, 2008, pgs. 5-8.
“Lectionary Homiletics,” Volume XIX, Number 6, pgs. 11-12.
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